Swami Chetanananda
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A Talk by SWAMI CHETANANANDA
Be the Hero of Your Own Life
Nityananda Institute, Santa Monica Center, June 14, 2000Question: Swamiji, can you talk about being the hero of your own life?
Swami Chetanananda: I think there are three parts to it. The first thing you have to do is embrace the life that you have and take responsibility for it, understanding that nobody makes it wonderful but you. And make it that way, or, at least, strive to. The making it wonderful has nothing to do with the way you arrange the flowers or how much pepper you put in the sauce. It has to do with what quality you bring from your heart to the hard parts of your day and the difficult experiences that you have in your life. The rest of the time, it's easy, so there's no work in that. It is easy, and why more people don't do it, I don't know.
The second thing is generating a vision. In a sense, that's having a very very deep and profound commitment to something bigger than you. For me, it was my teacher. Basically, it's being willing to put your life on the line for something bigger than you are, and the courage to take risks around that. And the courage that's in the strength to take responsibility for what happens.
And the final thing is that, in the process of this transformation, that you inevitably go through, every kind of oddball scene plays itself in your life, from east and west and left and right. But whatever circumstances present themselves, the response that we have to have is to open within ourselves, to keep our heart open, to keep our focus on our goal, and walk through fire or hell or whatever presents itself, lovingly, to experience that transformation. When you don't have a vision, you don't have a commitment to something bigger than you, and you get lost. It's so easy just to get lost. When there's no energy being generated in you around anything, then your energy gets sucked up into every kind of first, irritation; then, worry; and then, real tensions and struggle, and in that whole process our life becomes completely trivialized.
Question: Where do I begin?
Swami Chetanananda: I think we start this process wherever we are. It has nothing to do with anything outside you, really, at all. It has everything to do with accepting your life as it is right now, and feeling into it, the profound possibility, and continuing to relate to, to feel and feel and feel and feel and feel and feel that possibility, no matter what. And everything will come to drag your attention away - everything. And that's what the whole world is, and sixty-five percent of what goes on between our ears. It's just a test, an obstruction, a distraction.
Question: What do I do when practicing is difficult?
Swami Chetanananda: Whatever happens, you never give up. You never, ever, ever give up your vision, ever. You never let go of it. You never let go of your commitment. Because, we're not just working for this lifetime. We didn't just come from this lifetime. We don't just disappear when this is over. You're working for a very near goal. It doesn't take that long to get to about less than a tenth of a second, actually. But, for lots of people, to know that and to stay there is a little bit difficult. So, you hold on to your vision, and you pour as much love as you can into that and grow it, and my feeling is that you'll see a profound result in this life. It's also my personal experience.
Question: What is the goal of spiritual practice?
Swami Chetanananda: Ultimately, being a hero is about enlightenment and realization. In the stories about heroes, you hear it told from the side of the hero because they were the winners. But so much of becoming a hero is not about being a winner. It's about developing compassion and seeing the profoundly painful state of humanity, and having the courage in the face of that to continue to love more and more deeply every single day, not just this person or that person, but to love the whole of life. Because, for every winner in this world, there's at least a couple hundred thousand losers. Right? So it's not about being a winner.
It's not about success because that's all lucky. I think of the people I know who have a lot of money, and maybe one out of fifty actually earned it. The rest of it's luck. And there are lot of people who work their guts out every single day who don't make it. It's not about that. Becoming the hero of your own life is about discovering a completely profound power within you which is beyond this body and beyond this mind, but has, because of your contact with it, a profound healing power for you and everybody whose lives it touches.
Question: How do I know if I'm on the right track?
Swami Chetanananda: In the end, I think it is not that you feel like you did something good, or not that you experience a lot of adulation, because there are many many great sadhus - great spiritual people - who got no credit at all. In fact, they didn't want any; they just ran away. I think the point is to know, from the deepest part of yourself, that you lived your life totally to the fullest that it could be, that you didn't hold back.
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